‘Stamped From the Beginning’ Review: Netflix Doc Goes Back in Time to Explore the Origins of Anti-Blackness
variety.comMurtada Elfadl Many of us probably think we know how racist anti-Black ideas started or think racism was always part of the human condition.
Director Roger Ross Williams challenges these notions with his adaptation of Ibram X. Kendi’s book “Stamped From the Beginning.” Relying on testimony from Black female scholars and Kendi’s research, the helmer (whose previous credits include “Life, Animated” and “Cassandro”) starts by posing a provocative question: “What is wrong with Black people?” By the end of the film, Williams unsparingly topples the sanctimoniousness inherent in thinking the answer is simple or clear.
Even if it is. True to its title, “Stamped From the Beginning” seeks to explain the origin of anti-Blackness. According to activist Angela Davis, one of the esteemed talking heads who give the film its credibility: “It’s not about the color of one’s skin or the grade of one’s hair.
It’s about slavery.” That is how Europeans justified the transatlantic slave trade: by portraying Africans as beastly, ignorant, evil.
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